Viennese Tradition of Piano Making

The Bösendorfer Grand Upright 130 incorporates the experience of almost two centuries of grand piano making. Although physically an upright piano, the instrument surprises with subtle nuances and a powerful bass, and yet with a pure and pristine piano sound, without further tonal colors that are usually added by the large body of a concert grand.

The legendary pure and rich Bösendorfer sound is based on the Viennese tradition of piano making with its complex construction. Bösendorfer uses more than 80% naturally dried resonant spruce wood to build an instrument – more than any other manufacturer. When a note is played, the integrated spruce components become acoustically active, forming a complete resonating body similar in principle to a violin. Its precise mechanics offer optimum power transmission with maximum controllability. The carefully hand-spun bass strings – steel core strings with one or two layers of copper – also contribute to its warm and sonorous sound.

Sampling Precision

To capture the Bösendorfer Grand Upright 130 with all its subtleties, our engineers developed a highly precise motion-control system based on a solenoid that controls a noise-free “robot finger”. The micro-controller moves the finger with super-human precision, providing flexible curvatures for down-strokes and release movements, the latter corresponding with the preceding note length and various release speeds.

8 Microphone Positions

In order to capture this marvelous instrument in Stage B of Synchron Stage Vienna, our recording engineers used multiple high-end microphone arrays, affording an abundance of options for creating your individual sound.

Microphones

Standard Library

Full Library

1. Close 1 – Condenser (Schoeps 2 MK4 ORTF)

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2. Close 2 – Ribbon (Royer SF24 Blumlein)

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3. Close 3 – Condenser Large Diaphragm (Neumann 2 TLM 170 Cardioids)

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4. Mid 1 (Sennheiser MKH 40 ORTF behind the piano)

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5. Mid 2 (Schoeps KFM6 over the piano)

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6. Main/Room Mic – Decca Tree Stereo (Neumann KM 133)

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7. Main/Room Mic – Decca Tree Mono (Neumann KM 133)

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8. Main Surround – Stereo (Neumann KM 184)

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Even if you're not using a surround setup, you get more ambience variations and spatial depth out of the Full Library by adding the room and surround microphones' signals to your stereo mix.

Customize Your Personal Sound

In addition to the multitude of options from mixing various microphone signals, the Bösendorfer Upright comes with the free Vienna Synchron Pianos software that offers multiple options for shaping your sound and your playing experience. Hosting a high-performance playback engine, the software provides a full-blown mixer with a broad range of effects such as EQ, compressor, saturator, algorithmic reverb, delay, chorus, flanger, rotary, and many more. You may also adjust the volume of body resonances, sympathetic strings and pedal noises right in the main Play window. In the Edit window you can even tweak EQ, volume, tuning, dynamic range, etc. for each individual key!